Belgians vote in crucial regional polls

(BRUSSELS) - Belgian voters went to the polls Sunday for regional elections that could change the face of national politics and send the kingdom spiralling into a new crisis, following six months of uneasy calm.

Some 7.7 million Belgians, who are obliged by law to vote or face a fine, are being called to elect parliaments in Dutch-speaking Flanders, French-speaking Wallonia and bilingual Brussels for five years.

An assembly will also be chosen for the small German language minority.

At the same time the Belgian voters will also choose their members of the European parliament, along with 18 fellow EU nations, as those elections -- which began in Britain and the Netherlands on Thursday -- draw to a close.

The regional elections risk weakening the federal government, which was only formed in January and remains shaky two years after the last national polls.

Federal politics has been rocked by persistent Flemish demands for more power to be devolved to the regions, which French speakers reject, vastly complicating efforts to build a cabinet.

Christian Democrat Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy wants to see out his term in 2011 at the head of the current coalition, made up of three francophone parties and two from Flanders, the relatively rich region in northern Belgium.

Yet whether it be there, or in Wallonia to the south, the political landscape could change dramatically after Sunday's vote.

In Wallonia, the Socialist Party is in great difficulty and could lose control of the industrial region of some 3.5 million inhabitants which has traditionally been its own.

After insisting they have turned the page on a number of political and financial scandals from the past, the party has failed to renew itself and has been caught up in further controversy in recent weeks.

The liberal party has taken advantage of the slip-ups to campaign hard against the socialists, and it will probably fall to the greens party Ecolo -- forecast to win around 20 percent -- to play kingmaker between the two.

The party that loses could decide to join the opposition at federal level as well, which would deprive Van Rompuy of his majority.

In Flanders, the political landscape is even more fragmented because only the Christian Democrat CDV is likely to pass the 20 percent mark.

The far-right appears to be losing ground, but the populist "Lijst Dedecker" or the nationals of the New Flemish Alliance (NVA) could steal territory from the socialists and join forces with the CDV or the liberals.

If any of the changes in the regions lead to early general elections, as many in the Belgian media have speculated, Flanders is bound to renew its demands for more autonomy, a move the francophones fear could lead to the break-up of the kingdom.

While the problem has not been a focus of campaigning, the intercommunal tensions were highlighted recently when Flemish nationalists stopped people putting up French-language election posters in a flash-point Brussels suburb.